White Cops, Black Victims

adminJune 21,2009

[Speaking Truth To Power]

Why is there such stunning silence from City Hall and the Black political establishment regarding the recent shooting to death of police officer Omar Edwards, 25, by a white officer, Andrew Dunton?

This highlights the current impotence of the Black community to effect real policy changes for tangible political self-determination. Is this outrage to be forgotten already?

Officer Edwards’ execution –for he was shot from behind— is another example of the lethal consequence of Black America’s acquiescence to America’s racist criminalization of Blacks and the political emasculation of Black communities to stop the carnage.

Currently, we’re in the typical pattern of waiting for an indictment and do-nothing sham trial.

What kind of justice is to be expected from a system that is more criminally culpable than Officer Dunton? For, the foundational guilt of this and other similar crimes lay at the feet of white America’s “justice” system.

Once again, the standard spin is that this killing was just another “mistake.”

Mistake? Why is the face of crime within America’s criminal justice system a Black one? Half of America’s two million prisoners are Black. Is it a “mistake” that African-Americans, who represent a mere 12 to 15 percent of the country’s population, are targeted as the grist for the mill of the criminal “justice” system?

The great psychologists, Dr. Amos Wilson’s words, in his book “Black-on-Black Violence,” are

Instructive: “The perpetual domination of African-Americans requires the White American criminalization of the African-American male, i.e., the White American perception of the African male as inherently criminal. In the context of White American domination there are no innocent Black male, just Black male criminals who have not yet been detected, apprehended or convicted.”

We now know Officer Edwards bled to death while lying on the ground in handcuffs. The cops were also, said to be, from Edwards’ precinct.

Officer Edwards, who was holding a gun and chasing someone who had broken into his car, with his Black skin, fit American law enforcement’s profile of a predatory “perp.” In essence, he was perceived as just another criminally-inclined Black male, no different than those he was hired to arrest.

Unfortunately, he became another victim of a criminal “justice” system that projects Blacks as the primary perpetrators of crimes; “menaces to society.”

Officials at the New York Police Department are now talking, once again, about “diversity training.” Officer Dunton lives some 60 miles out in a very vanilla-white part of Long Island. What good is a residency rule when whites can come from boondocks outside of New York City to police Black people they’d never welcome in their neighbourhoods? Would whites from these segregated areas allow Blacks from Harlem or BedStuy to police their neighbourhoods?

The system’s “crime fighting” agenda, which presupposes the criminalization of Black people must no longer be tolerated.

“The White community makes it appear that it is threatened by a menacing Black community,” Dr. Wilson warned, in his book, “an evil, criminal, Black community which jeopardizes its existence: not the evil criminal inclinations it contains within its own bosom.”

This might be the reason, pinpointed by Dr. Wilson, for the trigger-happy inclinations of people such as Officer Dunton when they patrol Black communities.

The NYPD has announced it will hire a consultant to review their undercover policies and procedures. Governor David Paterson has talked about forming a commission to determine if there is an inordinate amount of Black and Latino officers injured by so-called NYPD “friendly fire.”

The insinuation here is that Officer Edwards was killed because of faulty or improper undercover procedures—which is nonsense. These are cosmetic public relations measures intended to quiet the criticism.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the out-of-touch billionaire has said the killing of Officer Edwards has nothing to do with race. If it has nothing to do with race, the mayor should name some White officers who have been shot in the back.

Isn’t this supposed to be the “time of change?” The Black community has witnessed the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president. Yet, we lack elementary self-determination at the most basic level: policing.

As Dr. Wilson puts it: “As far as the White American community is concerned, the African community and related groups function to support and service its dominance. The White community legislates, enforces and reinforces the role-functions and

behavioral boundaries of the African-American community in accordance with its dominance needs.”

Even though so-called “ethnic minority” populations now form the majority in New York City, they don’t control the levers of power. Moreover, why doesn’t the NYPD reflect the racial demographics of the city?

Black politicians at the local, state and federal level have enjoyed a pass for too long. They must be bounced from office unless they ensure that communities such as Harlem are policed by Harlem residents and not by officers such as Dunton, who come from the suburbs with their attendant fears and prejudices.

That’s the only way to stop the cycle of misery and murder that takes the lives of innocent people like Sean Bell, the unarmed young man murdered on the morning he was to have married, and now, Officer Omar Edwards.